Rants on /usr

Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict - Joy of the Vim Text Editor

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Context

As an experiment, I have recently started using Vim as my primary text editor. While I have been an Emacs aficionado for a very, very long time - clocking in at almost 16 years - Vim is something that I have always been curious about, and tinkered with from time to time, while ending up going back to Emacs. This time however, I intend to stick around for a while, and try to get a feel of the Zen of Vim.

Replacing Mail.app with Gmail on OSX

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Off late the Mail.app email client on OSX has been acting up on me. It often stalls or displays the spinning beach ball of death till a forced quit is required. Also, it seems to have display rendering issues when a mail classified incorrectly as junk is moved back to the inbox.

I tend to use the Mail.app as a local email client for three main purposes:

Offline mode for reading my emails when there is no Internet connection available
Easy desktop search for the mails via Spotlight, and
Easy archival of important mail in my project workspaces (either in Devonthink or plain text export)

The other features (TODO and Notes) are nice, but not really useful for me as I use other tools for these items. The mail itself is served out via gmail accounts and IMAP synchronization.

Do you Twitter?

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Twitter is one of those Web 2.0 applications that at first  glance seems to beg the question: why? But first, a description of the service  from its home page: Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and  stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple  question: What are you doing? In short, it allows you to post a short description of what you are doing right  now (or in fact, any short phrase at all - the trend seems to be for posting  witty or funny comments). The next obvious thing is to track what others are doing - which can be a  limited set of your friends, or for anyone who has chosen to make their status  public. Another interesting use is to use it as a virtual SMS mechanism on the  web - you can choose to only track your friends, and use the service to keep in  virtual touch with each other. Twitter offers tracking and update via the web, IM as well as SMS via a  cell-phone. The service has already gained a large following, and many web celebrities such  as Marlin Mann of 43Folders fame or Cali Lewis from  GeekBrief TV are on board. Yours truly is also testing the waters right now, and has the handle evolve75  on the service. There are also quite a few tools already available to make the usage easier. A  Firefox extension called twitbin enables live tracking via  a side-bar on your browser, and OS X dashboard widget called  Twadget is available for updating Twitter from your Mac desktop (for  Vista users, an alternate version for the sidebar is available  here). Whether Twitter is just another Web 2.0 meme - or here to stay - remains to be  seen. The service is useful, but carries the risk of the novelty fading away  to becoming a chore :-( ~ Anupam